April 28, 2011
Trent J. Perrotto
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0321
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov
MEDIA ADVISORY: M11-087
NASA HOSTS SCIENCE UPDATE ABOUT GRAVITY PROBE B MISSION
WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT on
Wednesday, May 4, to discuss the science results and legacy of the
Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mission. The event will be in the NASA
Headquarters Webb auditorium at 300 E Street SW in Washington.
GP-B is a NASA physics mission designed to measure two key predictions
of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein predicted
that space and time are distorted by the presence of massive objects.
The experiment used four ultra-precise gyroscopes to measure the
geodetic effect, which is the warping of space and time by a
celestial body like Earth, and frame-dragging, which is the amount a
spinning object like Earth pulls space and time with it as it
rotates.
Media may attend the event, join by phone or ask questions from
participating NASA centers. To RSVP or obtain dial-in information,
media must contact Trent Perrotto at trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov with
their name, media affiliation and telephone number by 5 p.m. on May
3. NASA Television and the agency's website will broadcast the event
live.
The news conference panelists are:
-- Bill Danchi, senior astrophysicist and program scientist, NASA
Headquarters, Washington
-- Francis Everitt, principal investigator on Gravity Probe B Mission,
Stanford University,
-- Rex Geveden, president Teledyne Brown Engineering, Inc.,
Huntsville, Ala.
-- Colleen Hartman, senior advisor, NASA Headquarters and research
professor, George Washington University
-- Clifford Will, professor of Physics, Washington University, St.
Louis
For NASA TV streaming video and downlink information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
For more information about Gravity Probe B, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/gpb
and
http://einstein.stanford.edu/
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